Vendors

Australian public cloud computing and storage company, Ninefold, is making available a set of tools for community development libraries to aid developers and organisations standardise and streamline inter-cloud computing projects.

Ninefold’s application programming interface (APIs) for both storage and compute have been included in jclouds (Java/JVM) and Fog (Ruby) libraries, and has been accepted for the Apache Foundation’s Libcloud (Python). The company has also developed a new open source Nuget package to make the APIs more accessible on Microsoft’s .NET platform.

It is currently looking for developers to build an open source cloud library for PHP.

Ninefold senior developer, Lachlan Hardy, said, “Technology changes incredibly fast and we want to ensure that our customers and IT professionals can more widely future-proof their work and investment. This is the kind of flexibility and commitment users need to look for in any technology provider.”

The solution aims to help IT professionals standardise the way their applications connect with its storage and compute cloud computing products, free of charge. These libraries confirm developers’ skills are easily exchangeable between diverse programming frameworks and mean that businesses are not locked in to a particular cloud computing environment.

They also reduce the complexity for organisations who may want to add or change their cloud computing providers and limit the changeover costs involved.

jclouds founder and chief evangelist at Cloudsoft, Adrian Cole, said, “jclouds users are attracted by a number of factors including ease of development, multi-cloud portability, and location awareness. Ninefold’s multiple compute and storage offerings provide our users co-location of data and processing within Australia’s jurisdiction.”

High-definition video collaboration company, LifeSize, has announced that its enterprise-class desktop and mobile video conferencing platform, LifeSize ClearSea (formerly Mirial ClearSea), supports iOS 5 and will soon support the new iPhone 4S.

Users will be able to instantly connect to the solution from any iPhone – including iPhone 4S, to any standards-based video conferencing system.

As the solution is open and interoperable, users can connect any H.323 or SIP-based video conferencing system or infrastructure solution to their desktops or mobile devices seamlessly and quickly.

Since Logitech acquired Mirial in July, the company has been working to extend open, interoperable video collaboration solutions to anyone, anywhere, on any device.

According to the company, it is the only vendor in the enterprise video conferencing market that offers natively interoperable video calling from the conference room to the PC, Mac and iOS 5 and other smartphones and tablets.

LifeSize Asia-Pacific vice-president, Simon Claringbold, said, “For years the market has struggled to deliver interoperable video conferencing solutions to mobile devices – the experience has been far from the simplicity of a voice call.”

The LifeSize ClearSea server is available as a hardware appliance or virtual machine software, includes a HD desktop client for PC/Mac and Android/iOS mobile devices and NAT/firewall traversal and multi-party conferencing capability.

The ClearSea is now available and support for Apple iPhone 4S will be made available in November 2011. A free trial of LifeSize ClearSea can be downloaded at: http://www.clearsea.com/download.html.

UKTI launches Go UK competition for Australian businesses

The United Kingdom Trade & Investment (UKTI) has devised a competition called Go UK, launched for A/NZ businesses wishing to set up in the UK.

The organisation has helped more than 40 Australian companies successfully establish themselves in the UK last year and has set up approximately 1000 Australian companies doing business in the region.

According to UKTI A/NZ director general, Richard Morris, now is an opportune time for Australian businesses to expand into the UK.

“The UK is the easiest place in Europe to do business and has the least barriers to entrepreneurship in the world. Just as Australia can be a gateway to Asia, the UK is the gateway to Europe and a combined population of around 500 million people,” Morris said.

He added that as the world’s sixth largest economy, Europe’s second largest ICT sector and one of the world’s top ten manufacturing nation, the UK is much more than a financial services centre.

The Go UK business competition will run between 29 September 2011 and February 2012 for Go UK participants to submit their business plan online. The closing date for registration and completed application forms is Friday, February 3, 2012.

The finalists for each region/category will be announced in February 2012 and an awards ceremony will be held at a cocktail reception in March 2012 in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

Three companies from Australia and one from New Zealand will each win a Go UK prize package worth at least $25,000. Go UK gives A/NZ companies the chance to win business support packages – including British Airways return airfares to London, meetings with potential business partners, client contacts, business networks, a free limited company, business services and ongoing UKTI support to expand to the UK, Europe and then the world.

To enter the Go UK competition, go to http://ukinaustralia.fco.gov.uk/go-uk. To find out more about UKTI go to http://ukinaustralia.fco.gov.uk/en/business.

Examining the changing job scene in the Aussie channel

​The changing job scene in Australia has showed no sign of slowing down following a hectic start to 2017, with a host of appointments, departures and reshuffles across vendor, distributor and reseller businesses. As a result, here’s a refreshed run down of who is working where in the channel.​​​

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